glossier is only the 25th best selling brand at sephora
so they're launching another fragrance
It’s Valentine’s, and the girls want zines!
Byline just released a limited-edition zine in partnership with sexual wellness company Julie, featuring love stories from Brianna Holt, Iman Hariri-Kia, and others.
And my friend
launched her zine today, which includes a little something from yours truly titled When The Worst Thing Happened to Me.As I always say, I’m a patron of the arts.
In today’s newsletter, I write about the audio erotica app recruiting your favorite actors, why Netflix might start vetting its talent’s social media, a new $60 million creator economy fund, All Fours getting a TV adaptation, and a bunch of other stuff. Its a long newsletter today.
ENJOY!
Funny how the only time I write about Bon Appétit is when they’re copying creators' ideas. There’s no way whoever green lit their Dinner With Friends series did not know about
.Glossier is releasing a new fragrance next month—seven years after the original Glossier You, and six months after the dual launch of Rêve and Doux. That Glossier is expanding their fragrance line does not surprise me—“fragrance represents the brand’s most expensive category, with some of the highest margins in all of beauty, allowing Glossier to offset softer performance in makeup and skincare, where the company has fallen behind competitors.” What surprises me is how quickly they are rolling this out, so soon after their last launch. According to Puck’s Rachel Strugatz, Glossier is going for a floral scent this time… called Fleur, with a Paris launch party and the usual fanfare to accompany it. 2024 was the year of the great M&A that wasn’t, as beauty brands with massive valuations struggled to entice the right strategic acquirers. As Rachel points out, “The success of Rhode basically eviscerates the notion that you need to spend $300 million building a brand for Gen Z.” Despite its seeming ubiquity, Glossier is only the 25th best-selling brand at Sephora, and this is before Rhode even enters the building. For every category they play in, there is a brand playing harder. And there is no doubt in my mind that at least one of their competitors—Rhode, Summer Fridays, or Rare Beauty—also has fragrance on their mind.
But beauty as a category might be in for a rough year ahead. In the past two weeks, Estée Lauder, Shiseido, and Coty reported fourth-quarter sales declines, while L’Oréal’s small increase fell short of analysts forecasts. Credit card data compiled by the Bank of America showed that beauty spending from Gen Z in the U.S. dropped by around 5% between June and December 2024, and quintessential Gen Z skincare brand Drunk Elephant said its sales declined by 25%.